Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone The First Woman to Play Professional Baseball in the Negro League

by Martha Ackmann

  Alberga could talk for hours, and he loved the limelight. Like Toni, he enjoyed celebrity and took pride in knowing local politicians, business owners, musicians, and sportsmen. And, like Toni, he was good at telling stories. One of his favorites was about skullduggery at the Need More, a saloon his uncle owned on the Barbary Coast, just below Montgomery Street in San Francisco. The Need More sat on pilings right on the estuary and was a favorite of weary crews just back from long voyages to China. Sea captains often found they needed two or three more men to make up a crew for the return trip to the Far East. So the captain hired hoodlums or “footpads” at the saloon. Sailors would get drunk, Alberga said, and footpads would drop them out the back door into a waiting boat where they’d be transported back to the ship bound for China.24 Alberga liked stories of people who broke rules, were unconventional, and charted their own course.

  Once Tomboy told her stories about barnstorming through Canada with the Twin City Colored Giants, Alberga was hooked. He and Jack’s owner, Al Love, began thinking about how they could help Toni become part of a local team.25 Love was known for his generosity. When Saunders King’s electric guitar did not have adequate amplification, Love “saw what I was drivin’ at,” King said, and bought the musician a better instrument.26 He also was not the type of man to let barriers stop him. During the war, Jack’s Tavern was famous for keeping the music playing even during blackouts. Heavy drapes bordered the front door, and when the air raid sirens went off, the curtains were closed. “No one could see the lights,” musicians said, and the partying continued.27

  Love and Alberga called upon their connections with the local American Legion to ask if Toni could join one of their sponsored teams. Toni had played a little American Legion ball back in Saint Paul, but team officials had denied her a uniform and she, naturally, felt left out in her own shirt and dungarees.28 But she was open to trying a new Legion team in order to get the chance to play ball. The A. H. Wall Post 435 met at the War Memorial Building on Van Ness, just around the corner from Jack’s. The post included many in the Fillmore music world and in fact was named in honor of Archie H. Wall, principal musician for the 24th Infantry in the Spanish-American War. Alberga knew the black veterans of Post 435 well. During World War I, he’d served as a first lieutenant and acting captain in Company A of the 365th Infantry. Some people around Jack’s Tavern still called him “Captain.” In the army, Alberga was responsible for recreation—organizing his regiment’s boxing matches, cross country runs, and baseball games. His commander praised his skill, observing that Alberga demonstrated “exceptional aptness for this line of work.”29 Apparently the Captain’s talent for sports promotion paid off. Toni became a member of the American Legion A. H. Wall Post 435 baseball team.* “I was the only woman,” she said. “We played twilight games and I met many, many friends.”30 Like other Junior Legion teams, players were required to be seventeen years old or under.31 As long as Toni was in the act of reinvention, the time seemed right for another modification. “I put my age back,” Toni said, lopping off a decade.32

  Fudging her age was hardly the only policy Toni violated in joining the American League team. Breaking the “girl rule” was disobeying a regulation that had been on the books since 1928 when a young woman from Brazil, Indiana, tried to play with an American Legion team. Officials balked with the same old response that Toni had heard before: girls shouldn’t play baseball because they might get hurt. But some Legion coaches did not view female baseball players as fragile, especially if a girl could help a team win, with or without a uniform. “Not everybody followed the rules,” an American Legion spokesman admitted, and unless an opposing coach protested (or even knew) about Toni playing, most teams looked the other way.33 If an opposing coach did not realize Toni was a girl, it wouldn’t be the first time. Back in Saint Paul, a young man from the neighborhood spent years watching a team before realizing that the talented infielder was Marcenia Stone.34 Some American Legion fans even reveled in the “oddities and amusing stories” of eager players out to prove themselves—they took it as a mark of a player’s grit. Since Legion players were “kids” presumably, some adults were more apt to excuse a few irregularities—perhaps even one as “irregular” as a twenty-six-year-old woman playing a boys’ game. Toni took her position in center field for the Wall post team and reported that Al Love kept his eye on her and made sure she was not patronized with easy drills. He “worked me to death,” Toni said.35

  Toni’s decision to play on the American Legion team was an informed move for someone who wanted to be taken seriously in baseball. Major league scouts looked closely at Legion players. Representatives from the St. Louis Cardinals, New York Yankees, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Brooklyn Dodgers trolled the national Legion tournament in Los Angeles at the end of August. They estimated the level of play was up 40 percent from the previous year and kept in mind those big league players such as Bob Feller and Bobby Doerr who once played junior Legion ball. That summer the great Babe Ruth, with only a year to live and looking ill, also made a swing through California’s Legion circuit observing new talent. By the end of the season, San Francisco’s Rincon Hill Legion club won the 1947 Northern California playoffs and went on to the state tourney. Toni’s A. H. Wall Post 435 did not advance, but playing Legion ball did bring her to the attention of other area teams. The next summer, hoping to raise the level of her play, she joined a local semi-pro team in the Peninsula Baseball League, becoming the only young woman to play Bay Area baseball with men.”* “Miss Stone performed for the A. H. post American Legion Juniors last year and she is an accomplished player,” a San Mateo sportswriter noted.36

  Restless and searching for a way to make baseball more than a pastime for evenings and weekends, Toni talked with the manager of her Legion team—a man Toni had won over with her persistence, as usual. He encouraged Toni to consider the possibility of West Coast professional baseball. The San Francisco Seals, a white team, just might take a chance on her, he said. Toni liked what she heard, as farfetched as the proposition was. “It’s in my mind to get to be wondering,” she later said.37

  San Francisco Seals Stadium stood on Potrero Hill at 16th and Bryant Streets, not far from Jack’s Tavern. The Seals squad was a member of the Pacific Coast League (PCL), a white league that was considered the top baseball organization on the West Coast. Because major league baseball had not yet come to California, the PCL offered the best baseball west of St. Louis. Many observers believed the players were as good as those in the major leagues. Beautiful weather, a longer playing season, and a schedule that didn’t involve much traveling added to the league’s allure. Some players called the PCL an older players’ league because some athletes could last longer in the better climate and with less travel.38 But the PCL boasted many young players as well. Eighteen-year-old Joe DiMaggio got his start playing with the Seals in 1932, while down in San Diego another Pacific Coast League team signed seventeen-year-old Ted Williams. Williams’s mother did not want him traveling far from home, so young Teddy pitched for the Padres in 1936 and 1937. Future major leaguers Bobby Doerr played second base for the Padres, and Vince DiMaggio played left field.39

  During the wartime migration to California, sports promoters pressured the PCL to begin signing black players. Many promoters believed baseball’s color barrier could be broken on the West Coast long before discrimination ended in the major leagues. The West, they argued, had always been the destination of pioneers and was less set in custom and convention than many other areas. Chet Brewer, a former Monarchs pitcher, thought he had a chance to integrate the league in 1943, but his shot never materialized.40

  Professional opportunities for black baseball players on the West Coast were few. There were no Negro League franchises in the West since the number of black residents in cities like San Francisco did not compare to Detroit and Birmingham. But the war changed that demographic. With thousands of blacks flocking to the West Coast for defense jobs in the shipyards, the time seemed right for integr
ation— or, if not yet, for enterprising business owners to think about bringing some black baseball to the Pacific. If the Pacific Coast League would not change its segregationist policies, then perhaps a professional black league could be formed. In the fall of 1945, two Berkeley firefighters, Eddie Harris and David Portlock, called a summit of like-minded entrepreneurs interested in organizing black baseball on the West Coast. The group met at the Elks clubhouse in West Oakland and drew up impressive plans. They organized six teams with a one-hundred-game schedule: the San Diego Tigers, Los Angeles White Sox, Oakland Larks, Seattle Steel Heads, Portland Rose Buds, and San Francisco Sea Lions. Abe Saperstein, the white owner of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball and baseball teams, became president; Olympic champion Jesse Owens assumed the vice presidency; Portlock and Harris served as secretary and business manager. The organization called itself the West Coast Negro Baseball Association (WCNBA) and sought players from Negro League teams in the East as well as local talent such as Lionel “Lefty” Wilson, a young standout from the Oakland area.* Salaries ranged from $175 to $300 a month, enough to draw some pitchers from the Negro Leagues such as Marion “Sugar” Cain. On May 12, 1946, a cloudy, cold day, California Governor Earl Warren threw out the first ball at Seals Stadium for the inaugural season of the WCNBA. Like Negro League teams, the WCNBA rented stadiums owned by white teams when those teams were on the road. That same day, across the Bay, the Oakland Larks hammered the visiting San Diego Tigers 16–1 in a game that ended in a concession after eight innings.41

  The concession should have been an omen. Several weeks later, Abe Saperstein complained that money wasn’t coming in as expected. The league was in trouble. “If anyone would have a definite complaint I would say the Portland club would have,” he wrote. “They arrived in the San Francisco area on May 18 and remained in the area through May 30 … a span of approximately two weeks which certainly cost them better than $3,000.00 in salaries, lodging, meals and whatnot … and the sum of their receipts in three dates played was approximately $170.00.” The problem, he said, was in “through-the-week” baseball. Towns other than the league cities had not been secured. There was little publicity. The Seattle team made two trips to Sacramento, played two games against San Francisco, and didn’t even recoup gas money, Saperstein complained.42 The Steelies had even more bad luck during a home series against San Diego. The Seattle team was in Salem, Oregon, when the bus broke down and they had to hitch rides to the game.43 By July, business manager Harris reported that the West Coast Negro Baseball Association was at the financial breaking point. By the middle of the month—just eight weeks after its hopeful beginning—the league ran out of gas.

  The WCNBA’s San Francisco Sea Lions and Oakland Larks were not willing to give up. If the West Coast couldn’t sustain a black league, then perhaps the two teams could make it barnstorming through the West and Canada. Hal King, a San Francisco sportsman, and Harold “Yellowhorse” Morris owned the Sea Lions. Morris had won fame as a pitcher for the Negro League’s Kansas City Monarchs, the Chicago American Giants, and the Detroit Stars and held the League record for complete games and most innings pitched. He earned his nickname for his light complexion and Native American lineage.44 After the WCNBA league folded, the men signed Cleo “Baldy” Benson, a former catcher for the American Giants, as the Sea Lions’ manager. The crew painted a red bus with the team’s name across the side and began booking barnstorming dates from North Dakota to Louisiana. While the road was grueling, players earned more money barnstorming than they had playing in the ill-fated league.

  Morris had another idea for making money. He hired the Oakland Larks’ featured attraction, Little Sammy Workman. Workman was a dwarf whose hands and feet had been amputated after he contracted a rare disease as a child. A man of remarkable resilience and skill, Workman astonished crowds with his ability to hit, throw, and catch, running the bases in shoes that he wore on his knees—turned backward in order to give him better balance. Morris brought Workman on the team to perform a show after the third inning. San Francisco Sea Lions pitcher Herald “BeeBop” Gordon heard Morris’s standard introduction of Workman so often that he could recite the script from memory.* “Ladies and gentleman, I would like to bring to you our featured attraction, Little Sammy Workman, the Wonder Boy, the boy without hands or feet catchin’ the ball, throwin’ the ball, hit-tin’ the ball, and runnin’ around the bases doin’ his death slide from third base. Incidentally, Ladies and Gentleman, Little Sammy travels with this ball club entirely on his own and any kind of donation that you might give will be highly appreciated inasmuch as he’s workin’ his way through college. Incidentally, Ladies and Gentleman, Little Sammy’s hands and feet fell off at the age of two. Without further ado, I will now present to you, Little Sammy Workman.”45 Workman would then go into his routine, tossing a ball back and forth to the pitcher, hitting a ball to the outfield, and rounding the bases. Workman and the Sea Lions outfielder had his hit timed so that by the time he ran toward third, the ball would be on its way and Sammy would “go into his death slide.” The fans went wild, Gordon said. “That guy was something else. He could play pool, he could play the piano, he could play drums, he could play cards with those nubs. He was strictly a miracle type of guy.”46 The funds for Workman’s college education that Yellowhorse asked for never funded Workman’s college career. Workman didn’t go to college. A Sea Lions pitcher who wasn’t on the mound that day would take the steel box into the stands and fans would stuff dollars into the slot. Then he’d return the box to Yellowhorse. “He’s the only one had the key to it,” Gordon said.47

  The Sea Lions proved to be a profitable team with high visibility. In December 1948 they traveled to the Philippines for a month, going 13–3 against university, U.S. military, and Filipino teams.48 That same year, the Sea Lions toured twenty-two states, winning 150 games and losing 20. They also took second place in the Denver Post’s Invitational Baseball Tournament.* Besides captain Baldy Benson, the Sea Lions included other former Negro League players including John Scroggins, a pitcher for the Monarchs; David “Speed” Whatley, an outfielder for the Homestead Grays; and the legendary Biz Mackey, a catcher who had made the rounds in Negro League ball for almost thirty years. Yellowhorse was working on bookings in Mexico and across Canada when Toni approached him. As she always did when asked about her experience, Toni stressed the fundamentals. “I work as hard as any of the fellows. I know what hit-and-run is, and I can steal bases, if necessary.” Years of playing as the only woman on male teams also had taught Toni that the odds against her were always formidable and skill alone would not persuade a manager to take a chance. She needed to sell herself. She told Yellowhorse a woman on a team could bring in crowds.49

  Everyone in baseball realized a lot had changed in the few short years since the West Coast Negro Baseball Association had gone belly up. During the 1948 season, John Ritchey, a catcher with the Negro League’s Chicago American Giants, finally broke the PCL color line and signed with the San Diego Padres. A rumor circulated that Luke Easter of the Homestead Grays might be next. The time was right for daring moves, and “I was a daredevil,” Toni said.50 As much as she peppered her argument to Yellowhorse with examples of change, Toni—or anyone else—had to only say two words to make her case: Jackie Robinson.

  On April 15, 1947, Jack Roosevelt Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball’s major leagues when he trotted out to first base at Ebbet’s Field in Brooklyn, New York. Toni followed Robinson’s every move in the pages of her beloved Chicago Defender. She knew Robinson was the only black man among 399 players in the major leagues and that he was twenty-eight years old, two years older than she was. She also knew Robinson went hitless that historic day and hitless for the next sixteen at bats that followed before his average began to rise. The pressure on Robinson must have been nearly unbearable. Satchel Paige had warned that being a pioneer would be difficult for Robinson or anyone. Maybe too difficult. “You keep blowing off about getting us players in the l
eague without thinking about our end of it,” Paige told a group of black reporters. No one really thought about “how tough it’s going to be for a colored ballplayer to come out of the clubhouse and have all the white guys calling him nigger and black so-and-so,” he said. “What I want to know is what the hell’s gonna happen to good will when one of those colored players, goaded out of his senses by repeated insults, takes a bat and busts fellowship in his damned head?”51

  As a woman player in a man’s game, Toni had experienced some of the prejudice Paige and Robinson described. She heard classmates call her “crazy” for playing baseball; she heard the jokes about her being far from ladylike. She even received occasional rebuffs from teammates when her play outmatched theirs. Like Robinson, she felt what it was like to be the odd one out: to sit alone in the dugout, to be excluded from the game’s camaraderie, to be regarded as a barely tolerable experiment.52 When Brooklyn Dodger general manager Branch Rickey told Robinson that he wanted “a ball player with guts enough not to fight back,” Toni knew what he meant.53 Jackie took the taunts and the strained hostility from some of his teammates, because he believed fans and other players would have “a change of mind when they realized I was a good ball player who could be helpful in their earning a few thousand more dollars.”54 Toni took the jeers because she wanted to play.

  Maybe it was the rhyme going around at the time about Jackie’s drawing power that convinced Yellowhorse to hire Toni. “Jackie’s nimble / Jackie’s quick / Jackie’s making / The turnstile click.”55 Just as she had done with the St. Peter Claver team, the Twin City Colored Giants, Wall Post 435, and the Peninsula Baseball League, Toni became the first woman on a men’s team. She started earning a couple hundred dollars every month and was able to send a little money home to her mother in Saint Paul. “Things turned out for me at the Lions,” she said.56 By the spring of 1949, Toni was headed to Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas as the female second baseman for the San Francisco Sea Lions. Life again had the improvisational rhythms she enjoyed—traveling around on a bus, seeing different towns every day, grabbing meals on the fly. She batted lead off and took advantage of any chance to get on base, including getting hit by a pitch. “Pitches come in now at ninety miles an hour,” she later said. “It’ll tear your brains out. You’ve got to know what you want and you’ve got to know where you’re going.”57 One reporter covering a game in Maryville, Missouri, was so impressed with Stone’s tenacity that he remembered her for years. “Let me tell you,” he wrote, “she’ll make your eyes pop out with the way she handles herself.”58 Gentry Jackson, the Sea Lions shortstop, argued that Toni was more than a curiosity. “A lot of people were looking at her as a woman ball player, but when she was on the field, the ball was hit to her as sharp as it was hit to me and she would pick it up and throw it. She wasn’t just a lady in uniform.”59 The Sea Lions shortstop was also impressed by the way she could take rough dugout language. “There were occasions,” Jackson said, “where someone would say things a lady wouldn’t want to hear. But she was able in most cases to join in the dialogue without getting embarrassed.”60 Like all barnstorming teams, the Sea Lions expected players to pull their weight in every aspect of the game, from pushing meandering cows off a field to serving as groundskeepers. On the swing through Texas, days of rain made the local field too wet for play. The Sea Lions poured kerosene over wet grass and set fire to it, in hopes the blaze would burn the diamond dry. It worked well enough to get the game started, but Toni slid on a wet patch during the game and injured her ankle. She was out of commission for weeks, but returned to the lineup when the team rolled toward the Deep South.